BobBear anti-fraud site shutting down.

This is sort of a bummer—the website bobbear.co.uk is shutting down for good.

According to the message on the site, if someone made a serious offer, he might sell the site to them. Even so, I doubt this would be done as a non-commercial venture. Websites always lose the thread when the person with the original vision is no longer involved (look at the sad case of JumpTheShark.com, which I’m not even going to link to because it’s pathetic. That was a bad thing you did, TVGuide.com).

BobBear was dedicated to exposing money laundering and reshipping fraud websites. Often these sites were hard to spot, as they look like professional pages from legitimate companies.

However, they were anything but. People who applied for jobs would either end up reshipping stolen electronics between thieves or wiring stolen money between bank accounts.

There are still a few lessons to be learned from BobBear:

You have to research companies before you apply for a job. Just because it has a website doesn’t mean it’s a real company.

Poor grammar and spelling are warning signs, but an absence of bad English doesn’t prove a site is legitimate.

There is no reason to hire someone to receive a shipment of goods, and then have them send it to someone else.

There is no reason to hire someone to receive electronic payments, and then have them wire these to someone else.